opponents who wish to treat them with respect. The dictates of humanity
may be set aside at discretion. With that spirit argument is useless.
With those who are inspired by it there can be no compromise, no truce.
It must be met by force inspired by moral earnestness. In that struggle
the alternative for the world is victory or death. Every man who falls
fighting against such a foe dies a martyr, witnessing by his death that
so far as in him lies the embodied powers of evil shall not prevail.
Unless the Power which thus claims to dominate is defeated it is useless
to talk of peace. On the other hand, it is essential to recognise, and
keep ever before us, the spirit which is opposed to this claim for
domination, this denial of the existence of justice, and to renew in the
whole nation the spirit in which it entered into the War.




CHAPTER III

LEAGUE OF NATIONS--THE SCHEME

_If any peace after the War is to be permanent there must
be a settlement not only between territorial claims but
an arrangement with regard to the machinery by which
peace will be maintained in the future._


Perhaps the most convenient way to gain a more definite idea of what the
proposal for a League of Nations really means, to understand both its
advantages and the difficulties involved in it, may be to follow the
debate on the subject initiated by Lord Parmoor in the House of Lords in